To help single-phase earthed fault management for neutral non-effectively grounded systems, the protection approaches in substations and on outside feeders are described. Some technical issues and solutions are discussed, such as time delay for tripping, permanent fault identification after reclosing, influence of the zero-sequence voltage transient, and handling intermittent arc earthed faults and cascading faults. The concept of three defensive lines for dealing with a signal-phase grounded fault in substations is elaborated. It consists of arc suppression coils, earthed fault protection and automatic searching approach in SCADA. It is emphasized that the field systematic test is an essential measure for earthed fault protection. The engineering of earthed fault protection with fifty-six substations in Xi'an city is introduced as an example. This shows the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approaches. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China “Key Technologies of Urban Intelligent Distribution Network Protection and Self-healing Control” (No. U1766208).